


Empiring 101

by StripedSunhat



Series: Single Father Klaus [10]
Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Klaus is a good parent, Paperwork, Pre-Canon, if a touch oblivious at times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 02:58:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16735794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripedSunhat/pseuds/StripedSunhat
Summary: Today's lesson: why micromanaging every single aspect of the empire is both painfully necessary and feasibly impossible.Or Klaus teaches Gil about resource management, tricks his son into doing paperwork for him and continues upon previously made false assumptions.





	Empiring 101

Gilgamesh blinked at the papers in front to him. He turned it sideways and blinked at it again. When that apparently didn’t yield the desired result he turned it upside down. When that still didn’t work he simply dropped his head on top of the stack. Attempting to do paperwork through mental transference directly onto the page. Klaus had used that method before. He’d yet to get it to work.

“That stack isn’t going to sort itself you know.”

Not bothering to lift his head, Gil groaned.

“You’re the one who wanted a more practical experience,” Klaus pointed out as he finished approving the form in his hand and reached for another one.

“This isn’t what I meant,” Gil grumbled, voice muffled. Klaus bit back a chuckle, well aware his son would not appreciate it. Lessons on how the empire was run were never Gilgamesh’s favorite thing to begin with. The last few weeks had been spent on the resource distribution of the empire, which, well, was _resource distribution_. Klaus couldn’t blame him. But sympathizing with him about it did not get Gil out of learning about it. So when Gil had complained about spending another day memorizing the supply lines of the empire, Klaus had instead handed him a stack of requisition forms to go over instead. At least Klaus was fair enough to suffer with him.

Klaus nudged him until he sat back up again. “Are they all so…” Gil examined the form again, searching for the right word, “Stupid?”

“Sometimes they’re even worse.”

Gil scrunched up his nose, tossing the papers down in disgust. “That shouldn’t even be possible.”

Stifling a chuckle Klaus pulled open his bottom drawer, rooting around through the mess of papers and pulling out the old requisition form he’d saved. He ran his fingers along the tattered corner. It was the single stupidest piece of paperwork to ever cross his – and he was sure any other – desk. He kept it largely to remind himself no matter what idiocy he was handed it could always be worse. “Here, take a look at this.” Gil took the form, expression changing from incredulity to stunned horror as he read.

Finally he set the papers down. He stared past them for a second before looking up at Klaus. “Father I think we should give Zoing his land allotment.”

“Oh we should, should we?”

“It has to be better than _this_ ,” he said, gesturing to the requisition form.

“You aren’t wrong. However the nobility would never accept it.”

“Since when do you care what they think?”

“It’s not a question of caring what they think it’s a matter of avoiding needless rebellions.”

“It’s not like you couldn’t stop them.”

“So we should be unconcerned with preventing rebellions tearing across our empire, threatening it and the people in it because we’re confident we can stop them?”

Gil squirmed in his seat. “No Father. Of course not.”

“The nobility will get upset whenever you take anyone’s power away, afraid they’ll be next. And it would only be worse if you replaced one of them with a non-human construct. They’re a very fragile group.”

“But you could keep them from revolting. All you’d have to do is show them this –” he waved the requisition form “– and they’d see why.”

“Son, someone had to write this. Probably multiple someones based on how it’s laid out. And then it had to be approved. And then it had to be carried all the way to the castle from their post by messengers. And since it’s low priority, there’s no way most if not all the messengers read it. Then once it arrived at the airship it would have gone to the quartermaster’s office, where one of his staff, if not the quartermaster himself, rather than handing the form off to one of the lower channels or better yet burning it, passed it on to me. Every last one of those people had to not only think that this form was not only good enough to pass along higher up the chain, but important enough to pass along directly to me.”

“Why do you let anyone else do anything?”

Klaus blinked, a little surprised that was his son’s first reaction. It certainly hadn’t been _his._ “You don’t find them too dumb to be worth protecting?”

“They’re too dumb to do anything _else_.”

“Again, you’re not wrong. However this,” here he gestured to the piles of papers cluttering the shared desk, “is after delegating as much as I can.”

            Gil groaned again and dropped his head back onto the desk. He did however reach for the next paper from his stack so there was that. Gil glanced over at the clock. That in and of itself wasn’t that unusual. He’d been glancing up at it on and off the entire time they’d been working. But this time it wasn’t the half-hearted confirmation that time hadn’t actually ground to a halt from boredom like it had been every other time he looked at it. This time it was the anxious check in of someone who had somewhere else to be and was edging into late.

“Do you have something you need to go do, Gilgamesh?”

“No! I mean, kind of? I was just going to spend some time with… a friend. It’s not important. It wasn’t anything planned or anything, just…” Gil trailed off, a hand hanging awkwardly in midair. “Nevermind.”

Klaus glanced at the still impressive stack of paperwork at his son’s elbow. Then he looked over at his son. Gil was glancing at the clock again. When he saw Klaus watching him he immediately dropped his eyes back to the papers in his hands.

“Go on.”

Gil immediately looked back up. “What?”

“I’ll handle the rest of the reports. Go meet up with your friend.”

“But I haven’t finished –”

“I assume you organized the reports I gave you by order of importance.” The first thing Gil had done with the stack was skim over all of the reports and reorder them, without any prompting. Klaus couldn’t even say how proud he’d been.

“Yes…”

“So you’re more than halfway done with your stack. Are you telling me that there are any left that require immediate approval?”

“Well, not exactly…” Gil pulled the bottom form out. “But this one will get more frustrating to deal with if it’s left on it’s own.” He ducked his head, staring down at the papers. “I was kind of waiting until last because, um… I didn’t really know what to do with it,” he admitted.

“Let me see.” Wordlessly Gil handed over the form. Klaus scanned the contents, a frown forming as he did so. This was a significantly toothier problem than he’d meant to give Gilgamesh, mostly for reasons his son didn’t know about. He could have sworn he’d only given him straightforward ones. Well shows what he knows. “I’ll handle it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You’ve done enough today. Go enjoy yourself.

Gil didn’t need telling twice. “Thank you Father,” he said, already scooting out of his chair.

“Have fun with Theo,” Klaus called after him before he could hit the door.

Gil stopped in the doorway. “I’m not – Oh yeah. Theo. Right. Because he’s my friend. And I would spend time with him because he’s my friend. I should go. I’m already late.” Then without so much as proper goodbye Gil was gone, dashing out of the room. Klaus listened to his rapid footfalls until they grew too far away and faded from hearing, a fond smile tugging at his lips. Then he turned back to the desk. Indulging in a sigh, he dragged Gil’s unfinished stack over and added it to his own.

Ah to be young and carefree.

**Author's Note:**

> Awkwardly flirting with Theo or sitting in on an otherwise all-jäger poker game with Dietrich. One of these things is probably the truth. But I’d be willing to bet you anything Gil’s about to ask the other to be his alibi.


End file.
